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Post by gofast24 on Jan 31, 2020 11:30:39 GMT -5
Also FWIW I was trying to share my TV thread on one of those fb groups. Searching for the EXACT thread title doesn't show up within Google at all. I have no idea how to fix that (need an SEO member I guess) but that's a big issue in gaining organic traffic. "3060 - Cabin TV Swap" - Doesn't come up in the first three pages of Google. Any SEO gurus here to explain why? If I would have had any advice on the TV swap I would have posted back to you. But as I dont I didnt want to provide any comment where I don't have any info or experience, sorry! I am already feeling a little guilty about posting so many responses to so many questions. Hoping we could get some more folks responding in the future? i am fairly experienced on engine/technical questions as I spent 38 years in the gas/diesel OEM industry as a engineer/later as sale engineer, most fun was in the late 70' working at Harley-Davidson as a senior test/development engineer  Thanks!, Imagine you are waiting for boating season to start back up? |
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 1, 2020 13:29:28 GMT -5
Also FWIW I was trying to share my TV thread on one of those fb groups. Searching for the EXACT thread title doesn't show up within Google at all. I have no idea how to fix that (need an SEO member I guess) but that's a big issue in gaining organic traffic. "3060 - Cabin TV Swap" - Doesn't come up in the first three pages of Google. Any SEO gurus here to explain why? Hello to all my Regal buddies! Long time no sea I've been looking for a while to see if anyone had started a new forum. Hadn't found it until Jon posted it to the Facebook group (thanks BTW Jon). It was a real shame to lose the old site and the wealth of information it held, but I'm all in to help with whatever I can do to rebuild and grow the new site. "We have the technology." "He (it) will be Better than before. Better, Stronger, Faster" (for my 70's TV nerds). I'm a retired IT guy, but by no means would I label myself an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert. I did however manage quite a few folks that would fit that description so I have a pretty good understanding of the process. SEO these days really is all about content and links and/or the almighty dollar (you pay for it). For organic SEO, we will just need more and more content...and time. It will not happen overnight. Unless of course we want to pony up and pay $$$ for it. It will also help to make sure we put links on other sites to our forum, as Jon did on Facebook. So in my humble/non expert opinion, I would start with: 1) Need to establish our own domain name. I'm assuming it was the old admin (Jon/John?? R.I.P) that owned the old domain names. ReaglOwnersForum.com and RegalOwnersClub.com. These both expire this year (6/20 and 9/20) respectively. There is a slim chance we could buy them back once they expire IF: they aren't set to auto renew, AND IF they don't get immediately/automatically bought up by a Domain Name company. They will often buy up expired domain names in the hopes of selling them back to the previous owner at a much higher rate. We can wait and see what happens with old domain names, but in the meantime I would suggest that we buy a new one (I'm happy to do that and absorb the cost). As an example, RegalBoatOwners.com is an available domain we could buy/use now, or any other suggested domain name that is available. 2) Once we have the new domain name, start putting links to it on all the other sites we can think of (like: TheHullTruth.com, forums.iBoats.com, and any other site you can think of). The more sites that link back to our site, the quicker the SEO will build. 3) Content, Content, Content. I know this is sort of a chicken and the egg thing, but we have to build as much content with the 300ish?? members we have now. Again, the more content we have the more the indexing bots will do their thing. 4) These is no guarantee that it will help, but once we have the domain name, we can also submit our site to the search engines (google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). They may accept it and add it...they may not. But it doesn't cost anything so.. 5) Last but not least...."we" can pay for it. So while we're talking about Paying...Av8ator1 was awesome for starting the new site, but speaking for myself and I'm assuming lots of other members, I'd be glad to chip in so that we add functionality and remove any limits. I'm not sure what plan/level Av8ator1 has currently with ProBoards but we can look at what make sense for us and plan accordingly. Sorry for the long winded post. Just excited to have the community back! Thanks, John |
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 1, 2020 20:26:55 GMT -5
John, happy your here and that you found us! Agree, Jon made a huge push this week and we gained alot of members...for that, thank you...while we are in the thanking business, lets not forget Gofast who has kept up on this forum and took the flag and ran with it.
I am open to buying the forum name, I agree that should be our next step. I do have an account with Godaddy and a few months back, I did buy regalboatownersforum.com I bought it because it was available. I am open to trying to get something else if the majority do not like this forum name.
As for the $$, I have funded this on my own and it has not been a burden as this is my get away. If folks want more features than what we have now, I just need to know what to get and what to upgrade. Once this becomes financially a pain, I will ask you guys to chip in.
One thought on offsetting the finances is putting an amazon link on the forum, I end up getting a tiny percentage of what you order from amazing. Your info is never shared with the site or me, its just a way for amazon to get their name on the site (now, I pay to have ads removed) so the only ad you will see, is a tiny bar for amazon.
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 2, 2020 8:59:04 GMT -5
John, happy your here and that you found us! Agree, Jon made a huge push this week and we gained alot of members...for that, thank you...while we are in the thanking business, lets not forget Gofast who has kept up on this forum and took the flag and ran with it. I am open to buying the forum name, I agree that should be our next step. I do have an account with Godaddy and a few months back, I did buy regalboatownersforum.com I bought it because it was available. I am open to trying to get something else if the majority do not like this forum name. As for the $$, I have funded this on my own and it has not been a burden as this is my get away. If folks want more features than what we have now, I just need to know what to get and what to upgrade. Once this becomes financially a pain, I will ask you guys to chip in. One thought on offsetting the finances is putting an amazon link on the forum, I end up getting a tiny percentage of what you order from amazing. Your info is never shared with the site or me, its just a way for amazon to get their name on the site (now, I pay to have ads removed) so the only ad you will see, is a tiny bar for amazon. Awesome that you have the old name. Even if you decide to get another domain name, it would be good to still point the old domain name to this site as well so that anyone who runs across it (old name) or remembers it will still get directed here. You could still use a new name too. You can have multiple domain names pointed at the site, doesn't have to be one or the other. Can be both or more for that matter. As a example, for my wife's real estate business, we probably have 10 domain names that point to one website. As for more features, to me one of the biggest limitations is the 3mb file size limit. I see in some old threads where you had talked about increasing it, but it still looks like it's in place (unless the limit is just for new members??). When posting manuals and such, it's really time consuming and cumbersome to have to break up the manuals to post, and that assuming folks can figure out how to do that. Difficult to consume/use for the downloader as well, as you have to potentially search through lots of individual files to find a specific topic. I think the amazon idea is great. Some of the nerd blogs/forums I frequent use that approach and I think it works well. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pretty sure I spend like 98% of my income at Amazon  |
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 2, 2020 15:02:56 GMT -5
Attachment Plan:Bronze
Max Per Attachment:3 MB
Max Files Per Post:8
Attachment Bandwidth:0 / 40 GB
The above is what we currently have for attachments, total size, we are allowed 800MB and we are currently only using 34MB. I am happy to increase, I just need to know to what...the cost goes up (no problem) but I want to increase to what we need and make sure we are not over paying for something we are not using.
So I have the domain purchased, how do I link this site to the domain name?
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 2, 2020 15:45:48 GMT -5
Attachment Plan:Bronze Max Per Attachment:3 MB Max Files Per Post:8 Attachment Bandwidth:0 / 40 GB The above is what we currently have for attachments, total size, we are allowed 800MB and we are currently only using 34MB. I am happy to increase, I just need to know to what...the cost goes up (no problem) but I want to increase to what we need and make sure we are not over paying for something we are not using. So I have the domain purchased, how do I link this site to the domain name? I'm not familiar with Proboard options, but if the screenshot from their support site is right, it looks like you can adjust each limit individually. I would suggest just upping the Max Per Attachment to say 25mb (not sure what the increments/cost differential are) and leave the max per post and the total size alone for now. I'll PM you on the domain stuff. Attachments:
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Jon
Full Member
Posts: 32
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Post by Jon on Feb 3, 2020 8:30:12 GMT -5
You guys are awesome! I'm happy to contribute as well. I know some forums have a contributing member banner or Pro account etc. That can be a nice spiff for those willing to assist monetarily. Sandlapper - Thanks for the tips on SEO. Noted on what I can do and I'll do just that. Gofast - I'm knee deep in deferred maintenance (previous owner) right now. But will be ready long before the weather breaks. |
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 3, 2020 16:37:41 GMT -5
John,
I looked at going to 25MB...not cost effective unless we change the structure of the forum...at 25mb, the cost per month for just data alone will increase to $123 per month.
I upped it to 9MB from the 4 we currently have, lets see what that gets us.
@sandlapper
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 3, 2020 17:27:59 GMT -5
John, I looked at going to 25MB...not cost effective unless we change the structure of the forum...at 25mb, the cost per month for just data alone will increase to $123 per month. I upped it to 9MB from the 4 we currently have, lets see what that gets us. @sandlapper Yeah, since I created a test Proboard I can see their structure and it's not as granular as you'd hope (of course). Although the costs I'm seeing are still not as high as $123. Are you in the section to just upgrade the attachment plan and not the whole site. Navigation bar in the top left should look something like: Regalownersforum> Admin Home> Settings> File Storage
And the setting page should look like the attached image What I'm seeing for the Diamond - 4000 MB plan would give us 20mb per attachment at a cost of 30.42 monthly However, even at that cost, it's still a $365 annual cost and one person shouldn't have to absorb that. So, I'm back to having more of us jump in and contribute. 9mb should be fine for most image files, but manuals and such will be much larger and may still be an issue. If just 20 of use went in for $25 annually that should more than cover all the costs. You can count me in. How about a Poll thread to see if folks think the increase is needed and if they would be willing to pitch in? Attachments:
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 3, 2020 18:33:19 GMT -5
Sure, do a poll and lets see what the results are...I did mention to folks the amazon link, that should offset the costs just a little bit.
My big point all along, I dont want to charge anyone anything...but your right, we get to a point where we either do it and grow or we stagnate.
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 7, 2020 18:36:43 GMT -5
Av8ator1, related to number of users and such.... One thing I've noticed is that if you are a guest (not logged in), you can see very little of the site and it's info. Is that by design, and if so what is the thinking? Folks who do find the site, may just assume there isn't much there and move on without becoming members and could be something else that may stunt the growth. If you look at the usage of the site in the last 24 hours, 22 users were staff/member but 45 were guests. Another big downside of this is that the Search Engine Indexing bots won't be able to crawl those pages and index the data for search. Would you consider allowing all users to see the full site even as a guest, but only post if they join? Just another thought. |
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 8, 2020 7:34:52 GMT -5
I don’t have a problem with that and will make the needed changes.
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Post by Av8ator1 on Feb 8, 2020 7:44:59 GMT -5
I ha e made the changes with the exception of seeing the deals and discount section and the manuals.
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Post by SandLapper on Feb 8, 2020 7:59:36 GMT -5
Awesome. I think that will help a lot. Excluding those two sections makes total sense. Thanks
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Post by Leeward on Feb 8, 2020 10:02:09 GMT -5
Guys, get this forum on Tapatalk!
Also, can you at least make it look like it was designed after 1998? Maybe being in my 30s is below the demographic you're going for here but I can tell you a big reason why no one posts here is because when you first open the forum, you laugh and think about the old AOL cd in the mail days, then close the page.
And yes offering to have "premium" paid accounts is totally acceptable these days. And why are you ASKING people permission to put revenue generating ads on the forum? That's what the internet is for, to make money.
Begging a new owner, I want this forum to grow. The regal store discount is pretty solid too... I'd market that more.... Of course whoever is running that store doesn't seem to have any sense of style or knowledge of how to maintain inventory😅😅
Queue the "back in my day" comments...
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